Wednesday, April 11, 2007

NPR : The Elements of E-mail Style

I don't know if I'm going to get to this book or not, but I think it will be both good and useful. Maybe one of you guys could read it and tell me what you think.

Why do we send so many electronic messages that we never should have written? Why do things spin out of control so quickly? Why don't people remember that email leaves an indelible electronic record? Why do we forget to compose our messages carefully so that people will know what we want without having to guess? We wrote this book to figure out why email has such a tendency to go awry–and to learn for ourselves how to email not just adequately but also well. Our Holy Grail: email that is so effective that it cuts down on email.

We don't hate email; we love it. We recognize that email has changed our lives in countless good ways. We just want to do it better. In fact, we think it's kind of remarkable that people manage on email as well as they do. After all, the odds are against us.

Link to NPR : The Elements of E-mail Style

2 comments:

jan@theviewfromher said...

I think it's still considered, in some circles (probably a little older, age-wise), to be like voicemail. I used to get emails from co-workers that said, "hey Jan, I have a question. Can you call me when you get back from lunch?"
ARGH. Delete.

Anonymous said...

I haven't read the book, but based on this excerpt, it sounds really good. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=3035262&page=1